Language

Follow us

You are here:

Wilder Future

Support the campaign for a Wilder Future

It's not too late to bring our wildlife back

Sadly, since we first met Badger, Ratty and friends in 1908, the UK has become one of the most nature-depleted nations in the world. The Wildlife Trusts have re-imagined Wind in the Willows in 2019, shedding light on some of the problems our wildlife faces every day. We’ve reached a point where our natural world is in critical condition and needs our help to put it into recovery.

It’s not too late to bring our wildlife back, but we must act now. Join the campaign and receive simple actions you can take for nature’s recovery.

Badger, Ratty, Mole and Toad

Watch our favourite characters as they begin their search for wilder future

Kenneth Grahame wrote Wind in the Willows just over a hundred years ago. Since then, many of the UK’s wild places and the plants and animals that depend on them have been lost. For example: 97% of lowland meadows and the beautiful wildflowers, insects, mammals and birds that they supported have disappeared; 80% of our beautiful purple heathlands have vanished.

Kenneth Grahame’s Ratty – the water vole – is the UK’s most rapidly declining mammal and has been lost from 94% of places where they were once prevalent, and their range is continuing to contract. Toad is also finding that times are very tough: he has lost nearly 70% of his own kind in the last 30 years alone – and much more than that in the last century.

Together we can make the next chapter for wildlife a happier one. Join us to put nature into recovery.

A bit more about the Wilder Future campaign

The Wilder Future campaign is about advocating for political change as well as asking people to take small ‘personal’ actions where they live to help wildlife. The idea is that these individual actions add up to something much bigger across the country.

The Wildlife Trusts want to create a tipping point of 1 in 4 people taking action.

We have therefore commissioned a film – ‘Wind & the Willows: A Wild Story’, which was screened in cinemas in March 2019, to reach and inspire the public to take action.

Politically, the campaign is calling for the creation of Nature Recovery Networks to better protect and join-up important places for wildlife. Here in Wales, we are asking for a *Sustainable Land Management Bill. In England, the campaign is calling for the Government’s upcoming Environment Bill to include measures to drive the creation of Nature Recovery Networks; whilst in Scotland we are campaigning for a separate Environment Bill.

(* Welsh Government need to create new legislation to replace the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which subsidies farmers based primarily on the amount of land holdings they have. The Welsh Government are looking to replace this with a Sustainable Land Management Bill or ‘Countryside’ Bill. This aims to invest in the creation of public goods which include creating more opportunities for wildlife, restoring habitats to sequester greenhouses gases, create natural flood management and habitats that purify water.)